-22.
The Commission submitted the application for the Court to declare that the State
was responsible for the violation of the rights embodied in Articles 13 (Freedom of
Thought and Expression) and 25 (Right to Judicial Protection) of the American
Convention, in relation to the obligations established in Articles 1(1) (Obligation to
Respect Rights) and 2 (Domestic Legal Effects) thereof, to the detriment of Marcel Claude
Reyes, Sebastián Cox Urrejola and Arturo Longton Guerrero.
3.
The facts described by the Commission in the application supposedly occurred
between May and August 1998 and refer to the State’s alleged refusal to provide Marcel
Claude Reyes, Sebastián Cox Urrejola and Arturo Longton Guerrero with all the
information they requested from the Foreign Investment Committee on the forestry
company Trillium and the Río Condor Project, a deforestation project to be executed in
Chile’s Region XII that “c[ould] be prejudicial to the environment and to the sustainable
development of Chile.” The Commission stated that this refusal occurred without the
State “providing any valid justification under Chilean law” and, supposedly, they “were
not granted an effective judicial remedy to contest a violation of the right of access to
information”; in addition, they “were not ensured the rights of access to information and
to judicial protection, and there were no mechanisms guaranteeing the right of access to
public information.”
4.
The Commission requested that, pursuant to Article 63(1) of the Convention, the
Court order the State to adopt specific measures of reparation indicated in the
application. Lastly, it requested the Court to order the State to pay the costs and
expenses arising from processing the case in the domestic jurisdiction and before the
body of the inter-American system.
II
JURISDICTION
5.
The Court is competent to hear this case, in the terms of Articles 62 and 63(1) of
the Convention, because Chile has been a State Party to the American Convention since
August 21, 1990, and accepted the compulsory jurisdiction of the Court on the same
date.
III
PROCEEDINGS BEFORE THE COMMISSION
6.
On December 17, 1998, a group composed of the “Clínica Jurídica de Interés
Público” of the Universidad Diego Portales; the Chilean organizations “FORJA,” the
“Terram Foundation” and “Corporación la Morada”; the Instituto de Defensa Legal of
Peru; the “Fundación Poder Ciudadano” and the Asociación para los Derechos Civiles
(Argentine organizations); and Baldo Prokurica Prokurica, Oswaldo Palma Flores, Guido
Girardo Lavín and Leopoldo Sánchez Grunert, submitted a petition to the Commission.
7.
On October 10, 2003, the Commission adopted Report No. 60/03 declaring the
case admissible. On November 11, 2003, the Commission made itself available to the
parties in order to reach a friendly settlement.
8.
On March 7, 2005, pursuant to Article 50 of the Convention, the Commission
adopted Report No. 31/05, in which it concluded that Chile had “violated the rights of
Marcel Claude Reyes, Sebastián Cox Urrejola and Arturo Longton Guerrero of access to